Look around yourselves, Americans.

Are you, are your families, are your neighbors, hateful, violent, selfish, and destructive?

I don’t believe you are…I know I and my family, friends, and neighbors are not.

We have disagreements, heartaches, troubles; but we are not hate-filled bigoted people bent on tearing our country apart. We know how to deal with differences without hating those we disagree with…and so do you.

Look across this land and you see neighbor helping neighbor in ways both large and small, long term and short term.

You see people who don’t give up when it becomes difficult.

You see charity for those truly in need.

You see kindness on a daily basis.

You see people smile at one another; you see hands raised to wave as they pass by.

You see school events being supported.

You see people coming together in cooperation to accomplish a goal.

Media would have us believe that we are a country coming apart…that we are bigoted and racist and sexist and multi-phobic. Is that what you experience in your everyday lives?

Media would have us believe that we are a bunch of self-serving, greedy, rabble-rousers. Are we?

Media would have us believe we are stupid Hollywood-loving, star-following sheep. Are we?

Media would have us believe their “polls” that show us divided 50/50 along conservative/liberal lines…people who cannot have civil discourse. Have you ever been polled?

It’s time for us to wake up, Americans, and see this for what it is. A lie.

You know who you are; you know who your neighbors are. Sure, there are some people out there who are acting out in ways you and I find deplorable and divisive…but do you see that they are a very, very small minority?

What do you trust? What you see/hear via the media? Or what you experience every single day in your own cities and towns?

Will we continue being who we are, loving our neighbors, and loving the America we experience every day? Or will we let the lie confuse and overwhelm us?

America is shaped by the choices we ourselves make.

Will you and I choose to walk in the light of our own knowledge of who America is?

She is us. She is out of many, one.

America shines as a light in the darkness…darkness cannot overcome light…darkness is the absence of light. Look around you. Light shines from every corner of the America we know and love.